Ouch

27092012

I only know two speeds; 1) Slow and steady and, 2) a bazillion miles an hour. Anything else in between and I struggle to get to and maintain. So I either get things done or I don’t. Sometimes I get close, but rarely.

Absent from this photo: Usain Bolt

Given what I do for a job, this can be an issue. I lift (what can be) reasonably heavy boxes and have to be careful.

Last summer when I broke down the load; a whole heap of pallets that get delivered that are jumbled and need sorting into their departments: home, apparel, toys etc, I was told that I was going to slow. Fair enough, first year in the job, still unfamiliar with all the boxes and not sure how much I can move at any one time. “Come on, pick up the pace, you’ve got x many pallets to get through and it needs to be done before night fill gets in”.

The number of boxes I had

As a result of this, I sped up quite a lot (and may have get boxes in wrong departments). But I got it done, so I was happy and so were the bosses.

Yesterday though, I was told that I was moving too fast and that I was going to do considerable damage to myself if I didn’t slow down. So I’ve got two different messages for the bosses.

I think that I’m going to go with the slow down though. Why? Well, when I was told to speed up, the only consequence was that I would lose my job because they would stop calling me back. And seeing as this is my first job and I’d had only had it a few months (or was it weeks?), I thought, ‘so I go back to my old ways of job searching’. When I was told to slow down yesterday, a whole raft of possible injuries that I could have done to myself were rattled off and some of them scared the living shit out of me; hernias, slipped disc, pinched nerves and a whole heap of others. Now I knew all these could happen, but I didn’t realise it took quite so little to do it. At the time, all I was doing was pushing a box of washing power so it sat straight in the cage and not at a funny angle. “There is nothing so important that we can’t take the time to do it safely”.

See kids, this is why we don’t eat lightsabers

The thing is though; I’m scared to do anything now. The boss used an example of picking up a piece of paper off the floor and throwing out your back. I pick up pieces of paper all the time so that no one slips on them, *gulp*.

No, No, NO! It’s mocking me! Please stop *whimper*

I enjoy my job because all the people that I work with are really easy going and great to get along with; and not only that, some of the stock we get in is really, really interesting. But I knew that was a reason that I wasn’t overly keen on super physical jobs; and that’s because I’m not the strongest person you’ll ever meet.